An individual service operating in a computer network may utilize its own built-in features for monitoring, analysis, and control of operations and associated network traffic. However, developers, maintainers, and operators of a service cannot be expected to have as high a level of sophistication and expertise as network efficiency and monitoring specialists.
Additionally, demands for network monitoring, analysis, and control for such purposes as security, antifraud, forensics, operations, system administration, and marketing research are frequently changing. This rapid change is due, at least in part, to the rapid proliferation and evolution of network services, security and fraud threats, network resource usage patterns, and user behaviors.
Thus, even when a network offers its own monitoring, analysis, and control (MAC) features, those features may not be designed to meet the needs of specific MAC tasks. Moreover, these MAC features may not function as designed, due to incomplete or faulty implementation. Oftentimes these MAC features are inadequately documented due to incomplete, incorrect, obsolete, or lost documentation.